The Khukuri

Sector: London Street Stardate: Tuesday 9 October 2001 Event: First episode of The Next Regurgitation Go back to Naan Trek home page

With a sense of excitement in the air our intrepid away team beamed down to the rendezvous point, an M-class pub known as Great Expectations (says it all really), to equip ourselves for the first adventure of our great quest. In accordance with our Prime Directive we set about consuming a few pints of fermented vegetable matter that the locals kindly replicated for us. In the spirit of the occasion, some members of the crew felt it appropriate to set their phasers to pun - while this was not universally welcomed it kept us engaged for a while.

Decor: Some stylish glass engravings and photographs, and the lighting was perfect. The room felt a bit like a corridor though.
Music: Naf 80's pop pap, "Very inauthentic s***" (Hogan).

Time to get served: Around 30 minutes.
Menu description: Fairly mundane and lacking information (e.g. Jalfrezi and Vindaloo were both described simply as "hot"), although there was plenty of historical content.

• Dave's doggy bag was clearly packaged by professionals.
• One of the menus was dirty.

Popadums and chutneys: Only three dips: "lumpy" mango chutney, "boring" sweet onions and fresh mint yoghurt. No spicy popadums.
Lime pickle: NO LIME PICKLE!!!
Onion bagees (£2.25): Unusual "U.S.S. Enterprise saucer-section" shape, perfect crispy texture although a little bland in taste.

• Samosas: good heat level; crisp.

Chicken Biryani (£7.10): "Very good except for the cucumber, 4/5" (Bouniol).
Chicken Jalfrezi: "Too hot" (Manu).
Vegetable Dansak (£4.10): "Pleasantly surprising" (Dixon).
King Prawn Bhuna (£8.25): "Parchingly hot at the expense of taste" (Hogan, the complete wus).
Lamb Patia (House Speciality £5.75) "Kicks butt, the best patia I've ever had" (Challinor).

• Food served in "breakfast bowls" rather than on some kind of heated plate.
• Too much rice, "boringly average". Egg-fried rice gets 7/10 (Holden).
• Unidentified saag side dish was "very nice" (Manu).

Key:

Yes

No

Too drunk to remember

• Buffet option is only on Sundays (from a mission several years ago: "The buffet option is dismal" - Hogan).
• Kingfisher on draught (£2.60 per pint), and an extra pint mysteriously materialized in front of us; I guess the management beamed it down to subtly "curry" favour.
• Sweet lassi was popular and very satisfactory: "The Lassi's great" (Challinor), "Mmmm, tangy" (Lawrence).
• W.C. was "palatial".
• Aeroplane "hot" towels were very lukewarm.
• After Eights with the bill.

In most of the sub-catagories our away team reported deficiencies, and recommended a different CD, some quality lime pickle and a few more dishes like the Lamb Patia. However, none of us had an objectionable experience by any means, and the consensus rating for the Khukuri was 3 Cobras: